Painted Ceilings in Tunja

Having seen just about everything there is to see in Villa de Leyva, we decided to take a local bus today to the provincial capital of Tunja, about a hour east of here.

Our guidebook said that the thing to see in Tunja are the colonial houses that have been preserved. They date back to the founding of Tunja in the mid-1500s. The guidebook was right. We visited two houses that were fantastic.

I think they get so few foreign tourists in Tunja that the guides in these houses were thrilled to show us around. We got the deluxe tour, just the two of us.

The first house was that of the founder of Tunja, a conquistador named Captain Rendon. The second was that of the man the King of Spain first put in charge of the town. His name was Don Juan de Vargas.

De Vargas was in charge of building both houses and was responsible for the design of the amazing paintings on the ceiling. It turns out that De Vargas had a great eclectic library with books depicting Greek and Roman mythology, African animals and many other things.

So in addition to the usual Christian symbols and symbols of the Spanish crown, he worked in elephants, monkeys, rhinos, Hercules, and many other unexpected things into the art on the ceiling.

The painted ceilings were not discovered until the early 1960s. A false ceiling had been added in both houses in the 1600s, covering up the vaulted ceiling. When part of the false ceiling fell down in one of the houses the amazing painted ceiling was revealed.